I agree with your characterization that offshore wind cannot save New England. I will go further.
After years of research and study of the challenges of wind, solar, and energy storage, I have evolved away from any support for those technologies in anything but niche applications. Ultimately, ignoring nuclear and relying upon weather-dependent resources to go to a zero-emissions grid necessitates unacceptable risk. There are weeklong periods where there’s no wind and little sun and that introduces tradeoffs not present in the existing electric system.
After decades of experience with the components of the existing electric system electric planners have a very good understanding of resource availability. The key point is that they do not have to worry about correlated outages across the electric system. Relying on wind and solar means that there will be correlated periods across vast areas when all generating resources are low. Furthermore, those periods correspond to the highest load demands while net-zero transition plans want to electrify everything possible. In order to “solve” that problem more and more energy storage or the magical dispatchable and emissions free resources will need to be deployed.
At some point we simply cannot afford to plan for the observed worst-case with a return period of ten, twenty, fifty or more because the backup sources will never pay for themselves. Inevitably there will be a wind and solar drought that exceeds the design case, insufficient energy will be available to meet load, and people will freeze to death in the dark.
Roger Caiazza, Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York Blog
I agree. I have sometimes described sunset as "common mode failure" for solar power. In Shorting the Grid, I say that the old rule was no single power plant should be more than 10% of the maximum load of the grid. Even though solar is "distributed" around the countryside, it actually acts as a megaplant, with a very coordinated failure time.
Something I can't help noticing no disrespect to you as a NY resident is just how even more screwed New York is than New England. Even if the percentages post Indian Point closure don't look that bad compared to New England you also have to keep in mind just geographically unbalanced the NY State grid is with all of the firm zero carbon resources now located upstate with most of the demand downstate. Unlike New England where at least both the load(Boston and SW Connecticut) along with the resources like Seabrook, Millstone, Northfield Mountain, CT River Hydro, etc. are more geographically balanced. While it might be as Chris Keefer called it "champagne" energy New England and Boston in particular does have the LNG option as well whereas NY State essentially banned large scale usage of LNG for "safety" reasons decades ago.
I wish I could argue with but I can't. The load pockets of New York City and Long Island relative to the generating resources Upstaate make the situation worse. Throw in the immense pressure by the Greens to shut down NYC peaking power plants and we are screwed.
New York does contain part of the Marcellus Shale. Also, New England shut down Yankee Rowe, Connecticut Yankee, Maine Yankee and other nuclear plants in the last twenty years or so. I don't think New York is worse off than we are.
I should have noted that I enjoy reading the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog, and also Manhattan Contrarian. Our daughter and her family live in Manhattan, so this area interests me specially.
I put out a fortnightly email blast with summaries of my recent blogs if you or any of your readers are interested. Send an email to nypragmaticenvironmentalist at gmail dot com.
I am actually a bit more concerned about the reliability of the gas grid in New York City and Manhattan in particular at the moment. Robert Bryce has discussed this on several occasions recently. NERC has been pretty firm for decades on insisting on 70% "in city" resource adequacy requirement for New York. Obviously most of this comes from fossil fuels(more like all of it) so the "greens" don't like it but it does put in place some guardrails. Manhattan is a bit better off than the outer boroughs because there was a third interstate pipeline built under the Hudson River just before opposing gas pipelines became a cause celebre. Even more ironic is this third pipeline(the other two run into the Upper West Side and under Central Park to the Upper East Side and the third runs into Harlem) basically terminates right next to the Whitney Museum of American Art under Gansevoort Street in the very chic Greenwich Village. Unique to New York City and Manhattan in particular the interstate operators handle "odor" insertion and other tasks themselves(that would normally be handled by the LDC's) in New Jersey before handing off the gas to Con Edison under the streets of Manhattan. Those big LNG tanks you see along the New Jersey Turnpike by the Meadowlands. That is where odor insertion and other "city gate" functions take place by Williams Transco allows for a "clean" and compact handoff to ConEd under Manhattan streets.
However both the "outer" boroughs and Westchester county have seen multiple new gas connection moratoriums due to shortages of inbound interstate pipeline capacity. BTW if you know what you are looking for you can see signs of the interstate pipeline trunk pipe along I think 75th Street on the Upper West Side, 71st Street on the Upper East Side and near "The Lake" in Central Park. Basically there are dig safe markers.
My own view is if you truly want a reliable net zero energy grid you need to do what Hyman Rickover did after the launch of first nuclear powered aircraft carrier Enterprise when Robert McNamara and his "wiz" kids did this big mathematical systems analysis that basically said that nuclear powered aircraft carriers were not good value for money compared to conventional aircraft carriers. In response Rickover went to Congress and got a law passed mandating ALL new aircraft carriers use nuclear propulsion over McNamara's objections.
An equivalent of this would be a law mandating say ALL new power plants be either nuclear or hydro and totally junking least cost integrated resource planning much in the way McNamara's systems analysis was junked by Rickover and his allies in Congress. Will this happen? I say maybe.
Are you familiar with the power quality issues associated with inverter power (from wind and solar farms) vs heavy rotating generators? I'm not in the industry and don't know if this is a real issue or not. I've read of issues such as reactive power and distortion, which I figure means power in something other than a the normal sine wave that electronics and heavy industry need.
This is may not be that much help, but FERC is trying to help the grid by firming up Inverter Based Resources (IBRs). Here is ISO-NE answer to a rule proposed by FERC. At least this ISO note lists the issues, and it attempts to describe which ones can be solved. https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2023/02/iso-ne_comments_on_ibr_nopr.pdf
This is a really complex issue that most in the energy industry are trying to avoid talking about. My guess is the RTO grid operators at some point maybe sooner than we think are going to have to start compensating generators for providing grid inertia. This will obviously be a boon for conventional generators like nuclear and hydro along with any new technological developments that allow inverter based resources to provide virtual inertia. For one other entity pricing inertia into the system will have real problems for and that is Hydro Quebec. HQ runs on a separate interconnection and imports and exports there power predominately over static frequency converters. The narrow exception to this is that Quebec does have some generators along its border that can be re-synced to the Ontario and NY grid and Ontario has some generators that like Saunders Dam that can be synced to Hydro Quebec. Of course however moving generators around like this reduces system flexibility. The one way around this for Hydro Quebec is they have for the last 20 years used variable frequency transformers on a small scale(100MW) to export power to NY State from there own interconnection as alternative to back to back HVDC static inverters. This is a bit beyond my technical understanding but I under VFT's to be able to provide grid intertia but again HQ has only done this on a relatively small scale. The bulk of Quebec's interties to it's neighbors use static HVDC inverters.
Tim, I have been attempting to research the IBR issue. I have not come to a conclusion yet. Well, I have one conclusion. DC interties between grids (such as the Pacific Intertie) seemed to have to be designed very carefully so a simple fault won't blow out a couple of states. They don't ride out faults very well. At this stage, I really don't know enough to say more about it. I
However, it does seem that putting up a DC tie line is an issue that can be dealt with, but it does take planning.
But it takes planning so the grids can ride through a fault on the DC line. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more complete answer. I need to do more research. 😕
I am familiar with the problems and can confirm that it is a real problem but do not know enough to explain them well. I did find a couple of videos that helped me understand the issues better. I recommend
Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder than You Think
I am familiar with the problems but do not know enough to confirm that it is a real problem. I did find a couple of Practical Engineering You Tube videos that helped me understand the issues better. I recommend
Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder than You Think
Thank you. I agree that the green energy supporters believe in wind and solar, but the frustrating part is the bullhead refusal to listen to anyone. They are the proverbial 🙈🙉.
Regarding offshore wind and New England, I have wondered how well those wind turbines would survive the hurricanes 🌀 and nor-easters that regularly travel those waters. Not much man made survives those storms.
There was a lease sale a year a while back on the Gulf Coast and there was a measly single bid for a plot of land off the coast of Louisiana. Not only is offshore wind too expensive but putting it in the Gulf of Mexico would be beyond the idiocy I've seen from wind developers in the northeast.
"In contrast, people who believe that that wind and solar will be able to replace nuclear in fifteen years are not being dishonest. They believe what they are saying. They think wind and solar with be enough, with a little help from batteries. Wind supporters are not deliberately lying."
This is the craziest part of this entire article. As an electrical engineer, I have yet to see an industrial site erect a wind or solar farm as a primary or even backup source of power. The whole part of "dispatchable" is that humans can dispatch the power when it's needed. When Mother Nature is the one dialing the power up or down, you're completely at her mercy. How is this a difficult concept to understand? This green energy and climatism is truly becoming a religion.
To be somewhat contrarian one issue we nuclear and reliability advocates need to deal with is that for all of New England's problems and the longstanding political controversy over nuclear, New England actually has a pretty respectable percentage of nuclear on its grid even post the closure of Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim. Right now, New England is getting more than 30% of its electricity from nuclear. This is more than California, Texas, Florida, and New York are getting from nuclear at the moment(NY is only 20% now with the closure of Indian Point and FL, TX, and CA are all under 10%). Percentage wise the closest comparable is the Southern Company service area in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi which after the opening of Vogtle 3 and 4 is about 30% nuclear as well. In term of places with higher percentages of nuclear in North America you are basically talking about Duke in North Carolina along with the TVA that are about 50% nuclear right now and then you have the straight nuclear grids of PECO and ComEd in PJM and Ontario of course(the France of North America albeit with a lot of hydro as well)
New England partially as a legacy of both current and decommissioned nuclear also has a high percentage of pumped hydro storage at Northfield Mountain, Bear Swamp and a smaller facility in Connecticut. Just on pure nameplate capacity we have more than New York(thanks anti Storm King protesters) and Southern Co in Georgia and percentage wise we still have more than California(Helms and Castaic), Duke in North Carolina(Bad Creek), and the TVA(Racoon Mountain) which all have higher nameplates but also have higher consumption. Texas, Florida, and Illinois don't have any pumped storage hydro period.
So, while I am no fan of offshore wind, I think we also have to deal the fact that a certain all of the above crowd looks at the amount of existing nuclear on the grid along with other firming technologies like pumped storage at Northfield and says well the "hard" reliable sources already have their fair share of the grid and offshore wind deserves it share. Again, I disagree but I also think we have to sharpen our arguments as well.
I once knew a guy who thought bipolar disorder was a form of demonic possession that only prayer could cure. The belief system of the wind advocates referenced in this report remind me of him.
It's a pity here in Texas we have so many, Queen Marie Antoinette's, (love the analogy) and it will of course be better when we have all those batteries installed, they will save the day. That's not to say they won't help with a blip here and there when solar or wind drop off the grid unexpectedly, they can at least balance for a moment or two. But let's consider the cost for a blip saver.
What we see happening this spring in Texas is just a little worrying for the future. If coal keeps retiring at the rate it is and no new gas is built quickly, it won't matter what solar we have in the build out, we are in trouble.
Listening to some legislators the other day, I think the light bulb has come on, they are talking about more dispatchable energy than I have heard before. Of course a long way from their mouths to reality.
Thank you for an excellent description of a problem that is self-inflicted by ISO-NE and increasingly by other energy regulatory bodies.
as to the times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, the Germans have a word which is a perfect description, dunkelflaute. it seems quite obvious that the strongest proponents of wind and solar as the ultimate solution do not understand that dunkelflaute happens all the time.
One of the most interesting things I noticed in your chart of Texas Wind + Solar is that while total installed capacity has increased from 25k to 58k MW, the average capacity has only increased from 10k to ~15k MW, excluding the most recent jump in Apr 24 to 20k (a level also reached in Apr-19 before falling back down). What do you think accounts for the average capacity not increasing proportional to the total capacity. Doesn’t this imply a falling capacity factor?
Wind turbines tend to interfere with each other to some extent, so there could be a falling capacity factor for wind. I have no idea why the solar capacity factor might fall.
It's probably a shift in the ratio of PV:Wind, with relatively more PV being installed during the time series range to what would have been there at the start.
Since PV has a lower average capacity factor (most places) more PV would lower the average when measured by simple nameplate.
Nice work. I worked offshore in GoM for many years. The notion that Wind will succeed out in the GoM is laughable. It also be noted the GoM is a funnel for hurricanes. A few years hence there will be a bunch of broken turbine towers ready for removal.
Meredith: Thank you for your important article regarding wind power, or the lack therof. There is an emotional appeal to both solar and wind. However, the Caravaggio graphic for Texas shows that wind and solar are not complementary. Instead, only dispatchable power I.e. nuclear, fossil, or large hydroelectricity is complementary to inherently unreliable solar wand wind. There is another important requirement for synchronous grid inertia (SGI) for a power grid to assure stability and prevent blackouts. Power grids are designed around SGI. Neither solar nor wind provide significant SGI. I recently wrote a brief introduction. https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important
Here are a pair of glossary entries from a publication via NARUC. Unfortunately, they exaggerate the contribution of wind generation.) Glossary of Electric and Gas Industry Terms and Concepts - Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, Updated and Revised February,
Inertia – as Voltage Support (see also Automatic Generation Control - AGC, Area Control Error (ACE),
Frequency, and Kinetic Energy): Baseload coal and nuclear generators, like natural gas generators other
rotating machines (motors and generators) including wind turbines provide needed inertia to support
frequency throughout an entire electric interconnection. At the instant load changes, the system must
change generation to match so power into the system must equal power out. Since it is not feasible to
change the fuel output or steam input of the generators on a split second basis, the rotating kinetic energy of every machine in the entire interconnection serves to help balance the system. For example, when a light is turned on, the energy needed comes from kinetic energy and the machines slow down and frequency drops. For a single light switch the drop in frequency is imperceptible. However, a rolling mill at a steel plant may cause a perceptible change. The Automatic Generation Control (AGC) system, on most large generating units, almost instantaneously recognizes the Area Control Error (ACE), which is a combination of the frequency drop and the importation of power from the rest of the interconnection as energy is supplied by their machines, and adjusts the output setting of the generators to restore frequency and tie-line flow. Thus, every piece of rotating equipment supplies inertia, including wind turbines (but not solar panels). Of course, large steam-powered turbines have considerably more inertia than a wind turbine (unless there are a few hundred of them) and wind turbines generally do not have the automatic generation control aspect of being able to react to the area control error.
Inertial Response: This is the kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of all of the synchronized turbine generators and motors on the interconnection. Produced by the slowing of the spinning inertial mass of rotating equipment on the interconnection that both releases the stored kinetic energy and arrests the decline of the interconnection frequency. This happens immediately following a disturbance.
1. The box-and-whisker diagrams of availability for the first three months of the year are revealing, not so much in their magnitude but in the range. It is incredible than any reasonable person can examine those ranges and conclude wind is a reliable source of power. Do you know if similar data are available for other power pools? It would be interesting to compare wind availability nationally. I live in the southwest power pool area, and our local utility is obsessed with wind and solar, despite the addition of three new data centers within the past 12 months.
2. Do similar data exist for solar power? I would expect to see a similar range, but a wider distribution about the mean. Give the effects of albedo, the amount of power could easily be random.
3. This is my most important question: do box-and-whisker diagrams exist for demand, on a daily/hourly basis. If not, it would be a worthwhile enterprise for some eager young graduate student to compile, then overlay, demand and availability data to determine if any statistical inferences could be made
I don't know of other versions of this information for other areas, but there might well be some. There should be more research on this topic. I agree.
New England had a dismal winter of heavy cloud cover and slow moving weather systems. There were periods of days when wind and solar were almost nonexistent. How can ISO-NE possibly plan for a future grid powered by wind, sun and batteries. FWIW, I asked ChatGPT how much it would cost to power the NE grid with batteries for 12 hours. The answer, complete with detailed calculations was $2.9 trillion!
Great post!
I agree with your characterization that offshore wind cannot save New England. I will go further.
After years of research and study of the challenges of wind, solar, and energy storage, I have evolved away from any support for those technologies in anything but niche applications. Ultimately, ignoring nuclear and relying upon weather-dependent resources to go to a zero-emissions grid necessitates unacceptable risk. There are weeklong periods where there’s no wind and little sun and that introduces tradeoffs not present in the existing electric system.
After decades of experience with the components of the existing electric system electric planners have a very good understanding of resource availability. The key point is that they do not have to worry about correlated outages across the electric system. Relying on wind and solar means that there will be correlated periods across vast areas when all generating resources are low. Furthermore, those periods correspond to the highest load demands while net-zero transition plans want to electrify everything possible. In order to “solve” that problem more and more energy storage or the magical dispatchable and emissions free resources will need to be deployed.
At some point we simply cannot afford to plan for the observed worst-case with a return period of ten, twenty, fifty or more because the backup sources will never pay for themselves. Inevitably there will be a wind and solar drought that exceeds the design case, insufficient energy will be available to meet load, and people will freeze to death in the dark.
Roger Caiazza, Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York Blog
I agree. I have sometimes described sunset as "common mode failure" for solar power. In Shorting the Grid, I say that the old rule was no single power plant should be more than 10% of the maximum load of the grid. Even though solar is "distributed" around the countryside, it actually acts as a megaplant, with a very coordinated failure time.
Great point. It always astounds me that proponents of renewables refer to them as resilient.
Something I can't help noticing no disrespect to you as a NY resident is just how even more screwed New York is than New England. Even if the percentages post Indian Point closure don't look that bad compared to New England you also have to keep in mind just geographically unbalanced the NY State grid is with all of the firm zero carbon resources now located upstate with most of the demand downstate. Unlike New England where at least both the load(Boston and SW Connecticut) along with the resources like Seabrook, Millstone, Northfield Mountain, CT River Hydro, etc. are more geographically balanced. While it might be as Chris Keefer called it "champagne" energy New England and Boston in particular does have the LNG option as well whereas NY State essentially banned large scale usage of LNG for "safety" reasons decades ago.
I wish I could argue with but I can't. The load pockets of New York City and Long Island relative to the generating resources Upstaate make the situation worse. Throw in the immense pressure by the Greens to shut down NYC peaking power plants and we are screwed.
New York does contain part of the Marcellus Shale. Also, New England shut down Yankee Rowe, Connecticut Yankee, Maine Yankee and other nuclear plants in the last twenty years or so. I don't think New York is worse off than we are.
I should have noted that I enjoy reading the Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York blog, and also Manhattan Contrarian. Our daughter and her family live in Manhattan, so this area interests me specially.
Thank you.
I put out a fortnightly email blast with summaries of my recent blogs if you or any of your readers are interested. Send an email to nypragmaticenvironmentalist at gmail dot com.
I have signed up. Thank you for the link.
I am actually a bit more concerned about the reliability of the gas grid in New York City and Manhattan in particular at the moment. Robert Bryce has discussed this on several occasions recently. NERC has been pretty firm for decades on insisting on 70% "in city" resource adequacy requirement for New York. Obviously most of this comes from fossil fuels(more like all of it) so the "greens" don't like it but it does put in place some guardrails. Manhattan is a bit better off than the outer boroughs because there was a third interstate pipeline built under the Hudson River just before opposing gas pipelines became a cause celebre. Even more ironic is this third pipeline(the other two run into the Upper West Side and under Central Park to the Upper East Side and the third runs into Harlem) basically terminates right next to the Whitney Museum of American Art under Gansevoort Street in the very chic Greenwich Village. Unique to New York City and Manhattan in particular the interstate operators handle "odor" insertion and other tasks themselves(that would normally be handled by the LDC's) in New Jersey before handing off the gas to Con Edison under the streets of Manhattan. Those big LNG tanks you see along the New Jersey Turnpike by the Meadowlands. That is where odor insertion and other "city gate" functions take place by Williams Transco allows for a "clean" and compact handoff to ConEd under Manhattan streets.
However both the "outer" boroughs and Westchester county have seen multiple new gas connection moratoriums due to shortages of inbound interstate pipeline capacity. BTW if you know what you are looking for you can see signs of the interstate pipeline trunk pipe along I think 75th Street on the Upper West Side, 71st Street on the Upper East Side and near "The Lake" in Central Park. Basically there are dig safe markers.
My own view is if you truly want a reliable net zero energy grid you need to do what Hyman Rickover did after the launch of first nuclear powered aircraft carrier Enterprise when Robert McNamara and his "wiz" kids did this big mathematical systems analysis that basically said that nuclear powered aircraft carriers were not good value for money compared to conventional aircraft carriers. In response Rickover went to Congress and got a law passed mandating ALL new aircraft carriers use nuclear propulsion over McNamara's objections.
An equivalent of this would be a law mandating say ALL new power plants be either nuclear or hydro and totally junking least cost integrated resource planning much in the way McNamara's systems analysis was junked by Rickover and his allies in Congress. Will this happen? I say maybe.
I agree with yout. That plan has a chance to work as opposed to the current wind and solar plans that cannot.
Would SMR’s resolve the issues of intermittency and reliability, indeed they would.
Are you familiar with the power quality issues associated with inverter power (from wind and solar farms) vs heavy rotating generators? I'm not in the industry and don't know if this is a real issue or not. I've read of issues such as reactive power and distortion, which I figure means power in something other than a the normal sine wave that electronics and heavy industry need.
This is may not be that much help, but FERC is trying to help the grid by firming up Inverter Based Resources (IBRs). Here is ISO-NE answer to a rule proposed by FERC. At least this ISO note lists the issues, and it attempts to describe which ones can be solved. https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2023/02/iso-ne_comments_on_ibr_nopr.pdf
This is a really complex issue that most in the energy industry are trying to avoid talking about. My guess is the RTO grid operators at some point maybe sooner than we think are going to have to start compensating generators for providing grid inertia. This will obviously be a boon for conventional generators like nuclear and hydro along with any new technological developments that allow inverter based resources to provide virtual inertia. For one other entity pricing inertia into the system will have real problems for and that is Hydro Quebec. HQ runs on a separate interconnection and imports and exports there power predominately over static frequency converters. The narrow exception to this is that Quebec does have some generators along its border that can be re-synced to the Ontario and NY grid and Ontario has some generators that like Saunders Dam that can be synced to Hydro Quebec. Of course however moving generators around like this reduces system flexibility. The one way around this for Hydro Quebec is they have for the last 20 years used variable frequency transformers on a small scale(100MW) to export power to NY State from there own interconnection as alternative to back to back HVDC static inverters. This is a bit beyond my technical understanding but I under VFT's to be able to provide grid intertia but again HQ has only done this on a relatively small scale. The bulk of Quebec's interties to it's neighbors use static HVDC inverters.
https://www.ipstconf.org/papers/Proc_IPST2005/05IPST075.pdf
Tim, I have been attempting to research the IBR issue. I have not come to a conclusion yet. Well, I have one conclusion. DC interties between grids (such as the Pacific Intertie) seemed to have to be designed very carefully so a simple fault won't blow out a couple of states. They don't ride out faults very well. At this stage, I really don't know enough to say more about it. I
However, it does seem that putting up a DC tie line is an issue that can be dealt with, but it does take planning.
Isn’r a DC tie a way to isolate 2 grids so neither can take down the other? Apologies if I am dumbing down a complicated issue.
Yes. Interties are used this way.
But it takes planning so the grids can ride through a fault on the DC line. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more complete answer. I need to do more research. 😕
I am familiar with the problems and can confirm that it is a real problem but do not know enough to explain them well. I did find a couple of videos that helped me understand the issues better. I recommend
Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder than You Think
https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw
How the Hawaiian Electric Grid Works
https://youtu.be/bbECmVdyWlQ
Thanks, I will check those out. I hope I’ve got enough math to understand the complexities of 3 phase AC power... probably not
I am familiar with the problems but do not know enough to confirm that it is a real problem. I did find a couple of Practical Engineering You Tube videos that helped me understand the issues better. I recommend
Connecting Solar to the Grid is Harder than You Think
https://youtu.be/7G4ipM2qjfw
How the Hawaiian Electric Grid Works
https://youtu.be/bbECmVdyWlQ
My bad - It is real problem
Anyone who's ever been stood up on a date can relate. You get all dolled up, but the turbines stop spinning, and suddenly you're going nowhere.
Thank you. I agree that the green energy supporters believe in wind and solar, but the frustrating part is the bullhead refusal to listen to anyone. They are the proverbial 🙈🙉.
Regarding offshore wind and New England, I have wondered how well those wind turbines would survive the hurricanes 🌀 and nor-easters that regularly travel those waters. Not much man made survives those storms.
Indeed. We have a fierce coast here in hurricane season and in winter.
Thank you for the comments.
There was a lease sale a year a while back on the Gulf Coast and there was a measly single bid for a plot of land off the coast of Louisiana. Not only is offshore wind too expensive but putting it in the Gulf of Mexico would be beyond the idiocy I've seen from wind developers in the northeast.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-launches-first-offshore-wind-auction-oil-rich-gulf-mexico-2023-08-29/
"In contrast, people who believe that that wind and solar will be able to replace nuclear in fifteen years are not being dishonest. They believe what they are saying. They think wind and solar with be enough, with a little help from batteries. Wind supporters are not deliberately lying."
This is the craziest part of this entire article. As an electrical engineer, I have yet to see an industrial site erect a wind or solar farm as a primary or even backup source of power. The whole part of "dispatchable" is that humans can dispatch the power when it's needed. When Mother Nature is the one dialing the power up or down, you're completely at her mercy. How is this a difficult concept to understand? This green energy and climatism is truly becoming a religion.
To be somewhat contrarian one issue we nuclear and reliability advocates need to deal with is that for all of New England's problems and the longstanding political controversy over nuclear, New England actually has a pretty respectable percentage of nuclear on its grid even post the closure of Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim. Right now, New England is getting more than 30% of its electricity from nuclear. This is more than California, Texas, Florida, and New York are getting from nuclear at the moment(NY is only 20% now with the closure of Indian Point and FL, TX, and CA are all under 10%). Percentage wise the closest comparable is the Southern Company service area in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi which after the opening of Vogtle 3 and 4 is about 30% nuclear as well. In term of places with higher percentages of nuclear in North America you are basically talking about Duke in North Carolina along with the TVA that are about 50% nuclear right now and then you have the straight nuclear grids of PECO and ComEd in PJM and Ontario of course(the France of North America albeit with a lot of hydro as well)
New England partially as a legacy of both current and decommissioned nuclear also has a high percentage of pumped hydro storage at Northfield Mountain, Bear Swamp and a smaller facility in Connecticut. Just on pure nameplate capacity we have more than New York(thanks anti Storm King protesters) and Southern Co in Georgia and percentage wise we still have more than California(Helms and Castaic), Duke in North Carolina(Bad Creek), and the TVA(Racoon Mountain) which all have higher nameplates but also have higher consumption. Texas, Florida, and Illinois don't have any pumped storage hydro period.
So, while I am no fan of offshore wind, I think we also have to deal the fact that a certain all of the above crowd looks at the amount of existing nuclear on the grid along with other firming technologies like pumped storage at Northfield and says well the "hard" reliable sources already have their fair share of the grid and offshore wind deserves it share. Again, I disagree but I also think we have to sharpen our arguments as well.
I once knew a guy who thought bipolar disorder was a form of demonic possession that only prayer could cure. The belief system of the wind advocates referenced in this report remind me of him.
Thank you for your great post.
It's a pity here in Texas we have so many, Queen Marie Antoinette's, (love the analogy) and it will of course be better when we have all those batteries installed, they will save the day. That's not to say they won't help with a blip here and there when solar or wind drop off the grid unexpectedly, they can at least balance for a moment or two. But let's consider the cost for a blip saver.
What we see happening this spring in Texas is just a little worrying for the future. If coal keeps retiring at the rate it is and no new gas is built quickly, it won't matter what solar we have in the build out, we are in trouble.
Listening to some legislators the other day, I think the light bulb has come on, they are talking about more dispatchable energy than I have heard before. Of course a long way from their mouths to reality.
Love you being on substack.
Thank you for an excellent description of a problem that is self-inflicted by ISO-NE and increasingly by other energy regulatory bodies.
as to the times when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, the Germans have a word which is a perfect description, dunkelflaute. it seems quite obvious that the strongest proponents of wind and solar as the ultimate solution do not understand that dunkelflaute happens all the time.
Excellent read! Thank you for the analysis and your insights.
It’s great to have the “Electric Grandmother” posting her thinking and information. Welcome to Substack, Meredith.
Sorry, Grandma, I didn’t mean to be so formal.
Grandmother is a fine name for me….either one!
One of the most interesting things I noticed in your chart of Texas Wind + Solar is that while total installed capacity has increased from 25k to 58k MW, the average capacity has only increased from 10k to ~15k MW, excluding the most recent jump in Apr 24 to 20k (a level also reached in Apr-19 before falling back down). What do you think accounts for the average capacity not increasing proportional to the total capacity. Doesn’t this imply a falling capacity factor?
Wind turbines tend to interfere with each other to some extent, so there could be a falling capacity factor for wind. I have no idea why the solar capacity factor might fall.
It's probably a shift in the ratio of PV:Wind, with relatively more PV being installed during the time series range to what would have been there at the start.
Since PV has a lower average capacity factor (most places) more PV would lower the average when measured by simple nameplate.
Nice work. I worked offshore in GoM for many years. The notion that Wind will succeed out in the GoM is laughable. It also be noted the GoM is a funnel for hurricanes. A few years hence there will be a bunch of broken turbine towers ready for removal.
Meredith: Thank you for your important article regarding wind power, or the lack therof. There is an emotional appeal to both solar and wind. However, the Caravaggio graphic for Texas shows that wind and solar are not complementary. Instead, only dispatchable power I.e. nuclear, fossil, or large hydroelectricity is complementary to inherently unreliable solar wand wind. There is another important requirement for synchronous grid inertia (SGI) for a power grid to assure stability and prevent blackouts. Power grids are designed around SGI. Neither solar nor wind provide significant SGI. I recently wrote a brief introduction. https://greennuke.substack.com/p/why-is-grid-inertia-important
Here are a pair of glossary entries from a publication via NARUC. Unfortunately, they exaggerate the contribution of wind generation.) Glossary of Electric and Gas Industry Terms and Concepts - Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, Updated and Revised February,
2022 https://pubs.naruc.org/pub/DD7DB67E-1866-DAAC-99FB-36526B06C7C6 (See the glossary for definitions of the acronyms below.)
Inertia – as Voltage Support (see also Automatic Generation Control - AGC, Area Control Error (ACE),
Frequency, and Kinetic Energy): Baseload coal and nuclear generators, like natural gas generators other
rotating machines (motors and generators) including wind turbines provide needed inertia to support
frequency throughout an entire electric interconnection. At the instant load changes, the system must
change generation to match so power into the system must equal power out. Since it is not feasible to
change the fuel output or steam input of the generators on a split second basis, the rotating kinetic energy of every machine in the entire interconnection serves to help balance the system. For example, when a light is turned on, the energy needed comes from kinetic energy and the machines slow down and frequency drops. For a single light switch the drop in frequency is imperceptible. However, a rolling mill at a steel plant may cause a perceptible change. The Automatic Generation Control (AGC) system, on most large generating units, almost instantaneously recognizes the Area Control Error (ACE), which is a combination of the frequency drop and the importation of power from the rest of the interconnection as energy is supplied by their machines, and adjusts the output setting of the generators to restore frequency and tie-line flow. Thus, every piece of rotating equipment supplies inertia, including wind turbines (but not solar panels). Of course, large steam-powered turbines have considerably more inertia than a wind turbine (unless there are a few hundred of them) and wind turbines generally do not have the automatic generation control aspect of being able to react to the area control error.
Inertial Response: This is the kinetic energy stored in the rotating mass of all of the synchronized turbine generators and motors on the interconnection. Produced by the slowing of the spinning inertial mass of rotating equipment on the interconnection that both releases the stored kinetic energy and arrests the decline of the interconnection frequency. This happens immediately following a disturbance.
Check out my other comment Gene about how for whatever reason John Geesman and co. don't like offshore wind.
Excellent post, thank you. Some questions:
1. The box-and-whisker diagrams of availability for the first three months of the year are revealing, not so much in their magnitude but in the range. It is incredible than any reasonable person can examine those ranges and conclude wind is a reliable source of power. Do you know if similar data are available for other power pools? It would be interesting to compare wind availability nationally. I live in the southwest power pool area, and our local utility is obsessed with wind and solar, despite the addition of three new data centers within the past 12 months.
2. Do similar data exist for solar power? I would expect to see a similar range, but a wider distribution about the mean. Give the effects of albedo, the amount of power could easily be random.
3. This is my most important question: do box-and-whisker diagrams exist for demand, on a daily/hourly basis. If not, it would be a worthwhile enterprise for some eager young graduate student to compile, then overlay, demand and availability data to determine if any statistical inferences could be made
Thank you again for the post.
Hi Barry,
I don't know of other versions of this information for other areas, but there might well be some. There should be more research on this topic. I agree.
Thank you for your note!
We should prepare to shut down wind as more nukes are built!
New England had a dismal winter of heavy cloud cover and slow moving weather systems. There were periods of days when wind and solar were almost nonexistent. How can ISO-NE possibly plan for a future grid powered by wind, sun and batteries. FWIW, I asked ChatGPT how much it would cost to power the NE grid with batteries for 12 hours. The answer, complete with detailed calculations was $2.9 trillion!